The world was black and white tonight under a film noir veil. I was the spectator, the hard-boiled detective under the crimson moon. The star. The only problem with this alpha male fantasy is that at this very moment, locked away in my dusty apartment, I’m scared shitless.
Below me a man lies in a pool of his own blood surrounded by a sketchy chalk outline. He is the portrait of a broken man. The ambulance, the coroner, the police - they’re present, but they’re extras in this cinematic flop. The man, he was a piano player.
The apartment I live in is part of a complex of many more of these small, cramped, spaces and that complex is across the street from an old hotel. Probably a local watering hole in the '20s. But the '20s are dead, just like Elvis. Cue laugh, end reel, cut frame. Terms and phrases juggle inside my head, but that’s already cheating. I digress like a schizophrenic.
The man was a piano player and he was the star of the lounge on the top floor of the hotel. In true swingin’ style. The place - the hotel, the neighbourhood - was a bad re-run of something I’ve never seen before. The streets were chock full of young men with gangster in their blood; I could’ve sworn that the tommy guns were still crying sorrow into the air even after I turned the television off. These gangsters, they’re all fucking amateurs, but they run the show. That’s the best way to sum up my disenchantment with this…franchise.
The piano player was a compulsive gambler, he couldn’t quit, so he began borrowing money from the mob. He was also supporting a heroin addiction like he would a dysfunctional family. It was tearing him apart. Then there was the girl - a singer, another star in this bleak sky, and the love of his life. He loved her even more than her money. The best picture I can paint you is the two of them sharing syringes in her diamond-encrusted suite. He was the pimp and the pusher. Until he got all shot up and pushed through an open window. It looks like the black-hearted gangsters do give a toss after all.
Nobody was watching, though. As soon as they saw that there was no affected smile, no happy ending, no casanova, they changed the channel. And there I was; trapped in limbo, in a white noise cell. The prisoner of nonchalance. Ignorance. The swingin’ twenties are dead, baby - as dead as Elvis. As dead as you and I.